The Guest List

At the beginning of this section, Olivia is wandering the tent and trying to drink as much alcohol as she can find. She eventually becomes extremely drunk, and Will corrals her out of the tent and to the edge of the cliff. It is the first time they have been alone together in months. Olivia tells Will that she will be coming clean about their past to Jules. Olivia is terrified that Will may decide to kill her to shut her up, as he corners her and edges her closer to the edge. When Olivia says that she will show Jules their text exchanges as proof, Will grabs her phone and throws it into the ocean. He threatens to release her nude photographs to the whole world. He gaslights her, telling Olivia that if she had ever intended to tell Jules, that she would have done so already. Unbeknownst to them, Jules has overheard the entire conversation. 

Back at the bar, Hannah is with the man she danced with and another college friend of Will’s. The two men bring up an ex-girlfriend that Will used to have. According to the men, Will got his revenge on his ex-girlfriend after being broken up with, when he sent around an explicit video of her without her consent. When Hannah overhears this conversation between Will’s college friends, she realizes that Will was Alice’s ex-boyfriend, and thus the reason why she ended her own life. Hannah wants nothing more than to get her revenge on Will. Later in the night of the wedding, the ushers come across a buckled shoe after they find the mangled crown. Later still, the group finds a dead body. The section ends with Aoife admiring the cake knife, inlaid with pearl, that is sharp enough to cut right through meat.

Jules overhears everything between Olivia and Will. She rips off her crown and throws it to the ground, stamping on it until it is twisted and mangled. Jules is humiliated by how Will has utterly betrayed and fooled her. Jules calls out to Will, calling him and Olivia back into the tent to cut the wedding cake. In doing so, Jules might well have saved Olivia from possibly being murdered by Will. For the first time, the novel shows Will’s perspective, wherein he genuinely considers getting rid of Olivia.

Later that night, the ushers run to the dead body and discover that it is Will. The men grieve, crying loudly, and absolutely lost as to what to do. The novel then begins to change perspectives quickly, from Hannah, Olivia, Jules, Johnno, to Aoife, and Will as the lights go out. The two different timelines of the novel have now converged.

There are many possibilities as to who might have been the one to murder Will. Jules, Olivia, Hannah, and Johnno all have their respective reasons for getting revenge on him. However, all these reasons are simply red herrings. It is Aoife who finds Will in the dark after the lights go out. Aoife confronts him about the young boy Will murdered all those years ago in boarding school. Loner, whose real name was Darcey, was Aoife’s brother. He was the boy with the effeminate name that discovered Will had stolen the GCSE papers. Freddy, Aoife’s husband, was Darcey’s friend and the boy who overheard Johnno and Will kidnap Darcey on the night he died. Aoife and Freddy planned this from the start: Aoife offered Jules a discount to hold her wedding on the Folly in order to talk to Will and find out the truth. After overhearing Will and Johnno discussing the matter, however, she now knows for certain that Darcey’s death was Will’s fault, and she decides to take revenge on him. Aoife also blames her parents’ death on Will—they died from the grief of losing their son and left Aoife alone. Aoife stabs Will right through the heart with the cake knife and kills him.

Back in the present, the groomsmen are convinced that Johnno is the murderer as he approaches them completely covered in blood. However, in truth, Johnno only had the misfortune of finding Will’s body and being the one to pull out the knife. Much like the GCSE exam answers, Johnno has once again been incorrectly blamed for something that he did not do. Johnno is convinced that with his luck, he will go to prison for Will’s murder. Despite this, he is oddly resigned to that fact as he wants to atone for the death of Darcey. The police arrive and take Johnno into custody.

Meanwhile, Olivia and Jules reconcile and begin to mend their relationship; Jules tells her that she knows what Will had done to her. Olivia immediately thinks that Jules will hate her, but instead, Jules bursts into loud sobs and hugs Olivia tightly. They feel like actual sisters for the first time. While Hannah and Charlie leave the island together, things have irrevocably changed between them. The novel ends with Hannah fervently wishing that she had been the one to kill Will.